Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child are the coauthors of the bestselling novels The Relic, Mount Dragon, Reliquary, and Riptide. Lincoln Child is a former book editor at St. Martin's Press and has published numerous short-story anthologies. He welcomes reader e-mail at .

Archaeologist Nora Kelly is adrift in her career and her personal life when a violent, inexplicable incident leaves her in possession of a mysterious letter. Written by her father, who vanished sixteen years ago in the remote desert, the letter reveals the location of a legendary site hidden in the redrock canyon country of southern Utah: Quivira, the Anasazi Indians' wondrous lost city of gold.

Convinced that her father truly had found Quivira, Nora puts together an expedition and takes a team up Lake Powell to the mouth of Serpentine Canyon. In the stark labyrinth of canyons and slickrock desert she will find the answer to both her greatest hopes and her deepest nightmares. For hidden in the shadows of the sunbaked cliffs are untold treasures, the solution to the greatest riddle of American archaeology—and implacable, suffocating death.

From the colossal fury of a savage desert storm to sunlight penetrating a mass grave for the first time in a thousand years, Thunderhead is a tale for anyone who has ever searched for clues to the past. In the masterful hands of Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, Thunderhead becomes an epic tale of discovery, human deceit, and a desperate struggle for survival in a place that has guarded its extraordinary secrets for centuries—and will not let go without a devastating fight.